Trump's double-disaster at Davos

Tough times for the Toxic Tangerine (Source: here) 

It has not been a good couple of days for Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos, though perhaps it was meant to be this way.

On the first day, Trump was forced into a humiliating climbdown over Greenland. He had to pledge not to use force and he was compelled to withdraw his proposed punishment tariffs on several European countries opposed to his expansionist plans. Trump also did himself no favours by not being able to differentiate between Iceland and Greenland. Even conservative media, such as the Wall Street Journal were scathing:

"New tariffs, insults and threats of invasion by President Trump have triggered a backlash in Davos, and the reactions from many U.S. allies and partners are stark: Trump’s America seems to have lost its mind."

Trump's second disaster was the pathetic launch of his so-called 'Board of Peace', which was originally designed to replace the United Nations as the world's main forum for conflict resolution.

Unfortunately, only some 50-odd countries joined his club, most of them authoritarian regimes. The low turn-out must have enraged Trump, because there are nearly 100 authoritarian regimes in the world, meaning he barely managed to get half of them to join. Democratic countries mostly kept their distance, of course. With his Board of Peace still-born presumably Trump can now also wave goodbye to any hope of getting Nobel Peace Prize this year.

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Trump's two disasters at Davos are quite significant. It is important to understand that Trump's Greenlandic ambition and his Board of Peace idea were both part of a much larger agenda to reshape international relations. Rooted the US Far-Right's 'Project 2025', Trump's idea was that Russia, China, and the United States would carve up the world between them, each one controlling about a third of the world. In not securing Greenland, however, Trump fell at the first hurdle. Then the Board of Peace, which was supposed to be the venue for the three big powers to coordinate actions, crashed. The entire international agenda for Project 2025 now lies broken at Trump's feet.

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What are the other implications of Trump's double-defeat at Davos?

First, having been thoroughly defeated in Switzerland Trump will now carry his humiliation back home, where it will translate into further erosion of his already bad poll numbers. Prior to Davos, more than 70% of Americans said the United States is out of control under Trump. These numbers will now get worse. Unless Trump pulls a major rabbit out of his hat, his Republican friends in Congress will therefore suffer a horrific walloping in November's mid-term elections. However, Trump will likely feel the pain much sooner than that. To avoid being tainted by Trump's fading star, many Republican Congressmen and women will already now begin to distance themselves from the president, thereby impinging on his legislative powers with immediate effect. After November, Trump will be lame duck and very possibly a target for impeachment.

Second, on the back of his double foreign policy disaster at Davos expect Trump to now double down on domestic policy instead. His two immediate targets are likely be Fed Chairman Jerome Powell (see here) and, of course, immigrants. Regarding immigrants, the US entered the 'ICE age' when Congress not so long ago awarded enormous funding to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. In the coming months, these resources will be put to work to significantly step up the ongoing pogrom against the weakest and most vulnerable people in America.

Bear in mind, of course, that ICE's purges against immigrants also serve as useful practice in case ICE has to be deployed, say, to enforce the Insurrection Act, which Trump could seek to invoke after he loses or annuls November's midterm elections.

Third, Europe scored an extremely rare, but welcome foreign policy success against none other than the United States. Europeans demonstrated once again that they are able to come together and act strongly when they face an existential crisis, just as they did in the European Debt Crisis in 2011/2012.

I can only hope that this victory somehow re-injects some momentum into the European project, ideally leading to a treaty that paves the way for fiscal union and a common European defence policy. I also hope that the quisling governments of the Czech Republic and Hungary - both of which aligned themselves with Trump over the Greenland issue - will keep a low profile going forward.

Of course, whether such benefits materialise remains highly uncertain. The existential risk is now on the wane, so there is every chance that Europe's politicians revert to their old ways of doing exactly nothing. Still, there is some hope. Non-US Western nations have found a new leader in Canada's Mark Carney, who exemplified himself at Davos with a brave, rousing, and visionary speech. France's Macron also showed some courage (albeit behind blue sunglasses that matched the background, very French). It would be encouraging if, by their examples, these two gentlemen can encourage other European leaders to also take braver positions on key policy issues, although this remains to be seen.  

Fourth, despite Trump's welcome setbacks at Davos the world is even more splintered and de-institutionalised than it was before the conference. The US is now - correctly - seen as incapable of sensible global leadership as long as Trump is in charge, but there is no obvious replacement. Besides, Trump's Board of Peace has further eroded the power of the United Nations, albeit only at the margin. In short, the big trend away from multilateralism towards nationalism, which has been in motion since 2008/2009 is still very much in place. This means that things will continue to get worse, possibly much worse, before they get better.

The End